This fresh take on the prophets will introduce you to our biblical role models in a way you might find startling, challenging, and probably not to your grandmother's liking. In this book, you will meet:I'm really excited about this book. I can't tell you how I've come to love the prophets while I was writing about them. It turns out they're not just a bunch of grumpy-pants who want to yell at us. Eighteen good prophets. One bad one. And every single one can help you today in very concrete ways.
We’ve lost touch with what it meant to encounter a prophet, or to be one. Let’s take a fresh look at the familiar prophets in our Bible. Every single one has a message for us in our lives today, because that’s how God rolls. He’s a multi-tasker, and the Bible is one of his main tools in speaking to us. Those very same prophets aren’t just for everyone who came before. They’re for us, too. These ancient, Hebrew prophets can help bring us closer to God’s love and his purpose in our lives — right here, right now.
- Moses - eighty-year-old freedom fighter
- Elijah - nuking the pagans
- Deborah - kicking ass and taking names
- Hosea - not family friendly
- Samuel - the only hope in a desperate hour
- Amos - sticking it to the man
- Anna and Simeon - God's tag team
- Jonah - mad as hell and running from God
- And a dozen more
The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in.
Harold C. Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare, Vo. 2
The biggest, baddest, most-all consuming Cosmic Empire ever known is about to meet its match:I've enjoyed Decoder Ring Theatre for a long time, specifically for the noir-style adventures of Black Jack Justice and girl detective Trixie Dixon. Gregg Taylor writes and presents all-new audio adventures in the tradition of the classic programs of radio's Golden Age. They are full-length, full-cast tales of mystery and adventure.
An eleven-year-old Earth Boy, on the run from summer camp.
Decoder Ring Theatre presents Bix Banderson Vs. The Universe, an intergalactic adventure par excellence.
Who has not caught some odd resemblance in an ink blot — to a tree, or a lizard, or a map of Florida? A Swiss psychologist has devised a personality test based on the "reading" of especially receptive ink blots prepared in advance. You tell what you see int he blots and unconsciously you expose your innermost self. The psychologist need not have taken all that trouble. The supreme imaginative literature of the world is a survival of the fittest ink blots of the ages, and nothing reveals a man with more precision than his reaction to it.
Harold Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare, vol. 1
To our age anything Delphic is anathema. We want the definite. As certainly as ours is a time of the expert and the technician, we are living under a dynasty of the intellect, and the aim of the intellect is not to wonder and love and grow wise about life, but to control it.
Harold Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare, vol. 1
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| Illustration by "Miss Stevenson", Bell Rock Lighthouse |
24 ... The Greek word for wise could also be translated as "prudent" (see 24:45); this man's prudence lay in his choice of a site to build his house (real estate has always been a matter of location, location, location). Galilee is dotted with limestone hills covered by an uneven layer of soil. Houses commonly had stone walls; an outcropping of rock provided a stable base for such walls. This wise builder picked a site where he could build his house on rock.Quote is from Bringing the Gospel of Matthew to Life by George Martin. This series first ran in 2008. I'm refreshing it as I go.
25 The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock. The rocky hills of Galilee do not readily absorb rain; a heavy rainfall can become a flood of water crashing down hillsides and filling ravines. A stone house built on rock can withstand floods and windstorms.
Jesus says that those who listen to his teachings and act on them, "will be like" (verse 24) a wise builder whose house withstands a storm; the phrase "will be like" points to something that will happen in the future. Prophets used storms as an image for God's judgment (Isaiah 28:2; 29:6); 30:30; Exek 13:10-16). Jesus is again speaking of the last judgment (see verses 13-14, 19, 21-23), now by means of a comparison or parable. Those who take Jesus' words to heart and act on them will withstand God's judgment, just as a house built on rock withstands a storm.
26 And everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built his house on sand. Rain flushed soil and sand down from hills to the floors of valleys and ravines, providing some temptingly level places to build a house. A foolish builder might choose such a site, laying the lowest course of house walls directly on sand.
27 The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. Storm runoff surged against the house, washing way the sand beneath its walls and undermining them, and the house collapsed and was completely ruined. Just as a house built on sand will collapse in a flood so those who do not live according to Jesus' teachings will face utter ruin at the last judgment.
Only very ingenious persons will think that the wise men of the ages did not know of the existence of the unconscious mind because they did not call it by that name or formulate its activities in twentieth-century terms.
Harold C. Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare, vol. 1
Is it a western? Yes. Is it sci-fi? Yes. 500 years in the future, society is a mixture of "core" planets with all the luxuries and those on "the rim" where life is more like living in a old time Western. The Alliance, the totalitarian government, controls everything in the core and would like to exert the same control over all the planets. |
| Catherine of Siena by Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, from her "Golden Book of Famous Women", published in 1919. Via J.R.'s Art Place |
It is the crowning virtue of a work of art, as it is of a man, that it should be an example of its own doctrine, an incarnation of its own main symbol. A poem about fire ought to burn. A poem about a brook ought to flow. A poem about childhood ought not just to tell about children but ought to be like a child itself, as are the best of Blake's Songs of Innocence.
Harold C. Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare
The Episodic Table of Elements is a science-history podcast exploring the culture and chemistry behind every element on the periodic table. Explore wild tales of scientific adventure that stretch back to the beginning of time itself. We’re traveling the periodic table in order of increasing atomic number: Episode 1 is hydrogen, episode 2 is helium, and so on.The episodes for this podcast range from 12 to 25 minutes each and that was almost a deal-breaker for me. 25 minutes about a scientific element? Booooring!
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| Jacques Matthias Schenker - View of the Thames [1885] Via Gandalf's Gallery, some rights reserved |
The Six Jolly Fellowship Porters, already mentioned as a tavern of a dropsical appearance, had long settled down into a state of hale infirmity. In its whole constitution it had not a straight floor, and hardly a straight line; but it had outlasted, and clearly would yet outlast, many a better-trimmed building, many a sprucer public-house. Externally, it was a narrow lopsided wooden jumble of corpulent windows heaped one upon another as you might heap as many toppling oranges, with a crazy wooden verandah impending over the water; indeed the whole house, inclusive of the complaining flag-staff on the roof, impended over the water, but seemed to have got into the condition of a faint-hearted diver who has paused so long on the brink that he will never go in at all.
This description applies to the river-frontage of the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters. The back of the establishment, though the chief entrance was there, so contracted that it merely represented in its connexion with the front, the handle of a flat iron set upright on its broadest end. This handle stood at the bottom of a wilderness of court and alley: which wilderness pressed so hard and close upon the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters as to leave the hostelry not an inch of ground beyond its door. For this reason, in combination with the fact that the house was all but afloat at high water, when the Porters had a family wash the linen subjected to that operation might usually be seen drying on lines stretched across the reception-rooms and bed-chambers.
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place."Maybe I've always loved this explanation from Jesus because I like to think of the people saying, "Now we can live a new way. No more of the 10 commandments!" Every time I see something that reminds me people acted just the way we do today, it makes me smile.
Matthew, 5:17-18
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| Moses and the Ten Commandments ±1600 - ±1624, Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, Netherlands |
All good writers express the state of their souls, even (as occurs in some cases of very good writers) if it is a state of damnation.
G.K. Chesterton, Appreciations and Criticismsof the Works of Charles Dickens
An understated comedy about a man whose home truly is his castle. Any normal person would jump at the chance to sell his property when the local airport wants to buy, as it sits at the end of an airport runway and directly under gigantic power lines. However, this man fights in court for the right to keep his home.This recipe is certainly silly. It says to separate two eggs, but it doesn't say how far to separate them.
Gracie Allen
Top agent Major Kabir is the head of a team hunting terrorists. Khalid is the eager, new recruit who must overcome the stigma of a father who was a traitor. When Kabir suddenly goes rogue, Khalid is the student who knows him best so it becomes his job to track Kabir down and try to stop him.
This movie pairs Bollywood veteran star Hrithik Roshan with up-and-coming Tiger Shroff. The result is a wonderfully entertaining Borne/Mission Impossible/Bond style action thriller accented with Bollywood masala. There's a good dose of patriotism for Mother India, an actual mother who is as loyal a patriot as you're ever going to find, and plenty of dancing.
If you want an action thriller with a lot of over the top lines, big in Bollywood acting, and two top male stars in exotic locations doing impossible stunts ... then this is your movie. We really enjoyed it, including my 85 year old mother who laughed through a lot of it (as we did too - over the top, remember?) and said she never needed to watch another action movie. "This one captured the essence of all of them," she said.
Rating — Introduction to Bollywood (come on in, the water's fine!)
Hannah and Rose discuss this in episode 41 of An American's Guide to Bollywood podcast.
it is not true to say that Mr. Reeder had ever engaged a secretary. It was Miss Gillette who engaged him. By one of those odd coincidences which are unacceptable to the lovers of fiction but which occur in everyday life, she arrived at Mr. Reeder's office on the day and at the hour he was expecting a temporary typist. For some reason the agency lady did not arrive or, if she did, was interviewed by Miss Gillette who, fulfilling the practise of the young queen bee, destroyed her rival in the nicest possible sense.
Edgar Wallace, Red Aces
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| Jesus Speaks Near the Treasury, James Tissot |
22 But I say to you: the I is emphatic; Jesus is proclaiming something on his own authority. Not only murderers but also whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. At issue is consciously harbored anger, not an unbidden and passing emotion. Deliberate anger can lead to murder; by prohibiting anger Jesus eliminates a source of murder. But what about when we think we have cause to be angry? Jesus does not seem to leave room for "righteous anger," which is often really "self-righteous anger," anger we wish to justify. Jesus' condemnation of anger is sweeping and covers whoever is angry. Matthew's first readers would have understood the word brother to mean a member of the church. For Christians to be angry with each other impairs the mission of the church to be the light of the world, which requires behaving in a way that leads others to glorify God (5:14, 16).Quote is from Bringing the Gospel of Matthew to Life by George Martin. This series first ran in 2008. I'm refreshing it as I go.
Jesus takes up verbal expressions of anger: and whoever says to his brother, "Raqa" will be answerable to the Sanhedrin. The Aramic word raqa is roughly equivalent to "blockhead" -- an insult, but not the worst thing someone can be called. Those who hurl this insult will be answerable to the Sanhedrin, which was the highest Jewish executive and judicial council. Similarly, whoever says, "You fool," will be liable to fiery Gehenna. The expression you fool is equivalent to raqa, not a worse insult, yet those who call another a fool will end up in fiery Gehenna. Some Jewish writings used Gehenna (the Hinnom Valley on the south and west sides of Jerusalem) as a symbol of punishment in the age to come. Jesus' words might be paraphrased in modern terms as, "A disciple who insults another disciple will be hauled before the Supreme Court in this life and go to hell in the next." Jesus seems to be exaggerating to make the point that abusive speech is a far more serious matter than one might think. (See 7:3-5 for another example of Jesus using exaggeration to make a point.)
Dirty Harry meets Bollywood. Singham is a righteous policeman from a small village who takes on the biggest criminal in Goa.
This movie is ridiculously entertaining. I've seen this three times and it remains entertaining each time. Ajay Devgn carries it all off with style. This movie added "tight slap" and "Welcome to Goa" to our household vocab.
This was, however, the first Indian movie I saw that made me realize just how deeply different the base cultural values can be between America and India. The ending is a troubling one for Americans as we see that our ideas of vengeance and revenge are in some ways very different from ones Indians celebrate. This has since been reinforced by other movies but this was the eye opener.
Regardless, Rohit Shetty (and team) know how to direct well choreographed fight scenes and over the top action that are tons of fun.
Rating — for viewers with medium Indian film experience. (It's not rocket science, but without any cultural background at all you might feel kind of lost.)
ALSO
Scott and I discuss it at A Good Story is Hard to Find.
Hannah and Rose discuss it as part of their cop movie series at An American's Guide to Bollywood.
The ability of America, led by New York, to transform immigrant millions, most of whom arrived penniless and frightened, into self-confident citizens, wealth-creators and social and cultural assets, was the essential strength of the expanding republic, which had now been doing the same for its own people for the best part of three centuries. As the culture of the New World became more complex, so more exciting combinations of talent—indeed genius—became feasible.
Paul Johnson,A History of the American People
Describing his fear of being sent to prison for a crime he believed he had not committed, Bryant told GQ that “The one thing that really helped me during that process—I’m Catholic, I grew up Catholic, my kids are Catholic—was talking to a priest.”Read the whole story at Catholic News Agency.
“It was actually kind of funny: He looks at me and says, ’Did you do it?’ And I say, ’Of course not.’ Then he asks, ’Do you have a good lawyer?’ And I’m like, ’Uh, yeah, he’s phenomenal.’ So then he just said, ’Let it go. Move on. God’s not going to give you anything you can’t handle, and it’s in his hands now. This is something you can’t control. So let it go.’ And that was the turning point,” Bryant said.
A large, Westernized, upper middle class Indian family is gathering for a wedding in a movie that includes Bollywood-ish singing, dancing, and romance. What may be unexpected are the strong messages about family love, protection of the innocent from sexual predators, doing the right thing and telling the truth no matter what it costs you. |
| Charlotte, Lady Milnes (1788-1792). Artist - George Romney. Via Books and Art |
Tollkien saw natural things freighted with the depth of meaning that all things possess, being rooted in the mind of God. God does not create things simply to fill up space. God creates for a reason, and the ultimate reason for his creation is love. Each thing, and especially each living thing, is a word, a symbol, a revelation. Each is a note, or a theme, in some great music. At any rate, it is more than itself: that is, more than the thing most people see when they look at it.
Stratford Caldecott,The Power of the Ring
The fruits of the Holy Spirit are the result of the virtues. To put it more poetically, the virtues are the blossoms on the tree of life, which we see in springtime, and the fruits are what come from these flowers at the time of ripeness. [...]
Interestingly enough for those who thought morality was all about gritting one's teeth and getting on with something unpleasant, tradition associates [the fruits] with the experience of delight. A "fruit" that we pluck from a tree, ripe and delicious, is something to be enjoyed, and the person who unselfconsciously possesses these fruits is a person who is able to take pleasure in life. His day-to-day existence is filled with happiness and pleasure. When we lack these characteristics we are resltless, discontented, morose and unhappy. That is a sign that something is wrong with us.
Stratford Caldecott,Fruits of the Holy Spirit
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| Christ is tempted by Satan. Engraved drawing by Jacob de Wit after Peter Paul Rubens. |
The focus [of the first temptation] is on the identity and power of Jesus. ... The temptation is not really about food but about turning Jesus away from the difficult road that the Father wills for his Son (26:39). His mission is not to serve himself by exploiting his divine prerogatives but to serve others by a life of heroic sacrifice (20:28).Quote is from Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture: The Gospel of Matthew by Curtis Mitch and Edward Sri. This series first ran in 2008. I'm refreshing it as I go.
Jesus responds with the words of Deut. 8:3: "One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the word of God." The statement is a short lesson on God's priorities for our lives, teaching us that physical needs are not our greatest needs.
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Immediately one notices how the tempter adjusts himself to the one being tempted. Jesus has quoted the Bible to express his commitment to live by God's word, and so the devil turns to the Bible to press his second attack. ...
The second temptation is essentially a challenge to the trustworthiness of God. Satan wants Jesus to subject his Father's promises to verification. ...
Jesus strikes back with words from Deut. 6:16: "You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test. The original context of this passage is the rebellion of the exodus generation in the wilderness [at Massah where] ... some demanded God give proof of his presence among them.
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Jesus has refused the offer to serve himself rather than his mission from, the Father and has declined the challenge to test the Father's goodwill. Now he is asked to repudiate the Father altogether by surrendering himself to the lordship of Satan, the "ruler of this world" (John 12:31).
Still Jesus remains unmoved. He responds, "Get away, Satan!" and drives the devil off with the words of Deut. 6:13: "The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve." The context of the quotation is instructive, for it prohibits the worship of "other gods" (Deut. 6:14). Bowing before Satan would be an act of idolatry, and Jesus will have no part of it.
For both popes [John Paul II and Benedict XVI], in fact "human ecology" in inseparable from environmental ecology, because respect for ourselves, for our sexuality, and for human life in all its stages and manifestations, is the manifestation of a respect for nature as such, which has been created in divine Wisdom: The book of nature is one and indivisible. It takes in not ony the environment, but also life, sexuality, marriage, family, social relations: in a word, integral human development. Our duties toward the environment are linked to our duties toward the human person, considered in himself and in relation to others. It would be wrong to uphold one set of duties while trampling on the other.
Stratford Caldecott,
Radiance of Being
Well, there you are a hobbit amongst the Urukhai. Keep up your hobbitry in your heart, and think that all stories feel like that when you are in them. You are inside a very great story!Christopher Tolkien died last week after devoting much of his life to curating, editing, and writing about his father's work. What a service he has done for mankind over his lifetime. Eternal peace grant him, O Lord.
J.R.R. Tolkien in a letter to his son Christopher
during the Second World War
Martha is a chef who has a great deal of discipline, an obsession with food although she never seems to eat, and little joy in her life. When her sister dies, Martha is forced into facing unknown situations after her orphaned niece comes to live with her. Then a new chef is added to the staff and Martha's loss of control seems complete. Suddenly Martha's life is no longer under control at all with the expected growth of character resulting.We will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize that the ends are not cut off from the means, because the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process. Ultimately you can't reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.
Martin Luther King, Jr.via The Radiance of Being by Stratford Caldecott
"Do you believe that truth is stranger than fiction?"That absolutely never occurred to me. Brilliant.
"Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction," said Basil placidly. "For fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it."
G.K. Chesterton, Club of Queer Trades
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| Christ in the Wilderness by Ivan Kramskoy, 1872 |
We must always remember that again and again we are tempted through our gifts. The person who is gifted with charm will be tempted to use that charm "to get away with anything." The person who is gifted with the power of words to produce glib excuses to justify his own conduct. The person with a vivid and sensitive imagination will undergo agonies of temptation that a more stolid person will never experience. The person with great gifts of mind will be tempted to use these gifts for himself and not for others, to become the master and not the servant of men. It is the grim fact of temptation that it is just where we are strongest that we must be forever on the watch.Quote is from Daily Study Bible Series: The Gospel of Matthew by William Barclay. This series first ran in 2008. I'm refreshing it as I go.
(v) No one can ever read this story without remembering that its source must have been Jesus himself. In the wilderness he was alone. No one was with him when this struggle was being fought out. And we know about it only because Jesus himself must have told his men about it. It is Jesus telling us his own spiritual autobiography.
We must always approach this story with a unique and special reverence, for in it Jesus is laying bare his inmost heart and soul. He is telling men what he went through. It is the most sacred of all stories, for in it Jesus is saying to us that he can help others who are tempted because he himself was tempted. He draws the veil from his own struggles to help us in our struggle.
The revolt of Matter against Man (which I believe to exist) has now been reduced to a singular condition. It is the small things rather than the large things which make war against us and, I may add, beat us. The bones of the last mammoth have long ago decayed, a mighty wreck; the tempests no longer devour our navies, nor the mountains with hearts of fire heap hell over our cities. But we are engaged in a bitter and eternal war with small things; chiefly with microbes and with collar studs. The stud with which I was engaged (on fierce and equal terms) as I made the above reflections, was one which I was trying to introduce into my shirt collar when a loud knock came at the door.
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I had already subdued the stud, thereby proclaiming that the image of God has supremacy over all matters (a valuable truth), and throwing on my dress-coat and waistcoat, hurried into the drawing-room.
G.K. Chesterton, The Club of Queer Trades
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| Learned Advice, Ludwig Deutsch via Gandalf's Gallery, some rights reserved |
We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God's universe is made; this is the way it is structured.
Martin Luther King, Jr.via Stratford Caldecott, The Radiance of Being
‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’ (Matthew 25:40)Considering Mary's situation when she said, "Yes" to bearing Christ for us, I feel as if I can't ignore these littlest ones among us and their parents who are being lied to by everyone else in our society. Who need someone to stand up for them and tell the truth.
Shults says her own composure that day was a result of both her training and her spiritual life.A great story from Texas Highways. Read it here.
“I had that isolated moment in time, and I did think that was going to be the day I met my maker,” she says. “That headlong rush to that cliff of ‘What if’ stopped short at that thought, and I realized I wouldn’t be meeting a stranger. That really gave me a calm.”
Basil Grant and I were talking one day in what is perhaps the most perfect place for talking on earth—the top of a tolerably deserted tramcar. To talk on the top of a hill is superb, but to talk on the top of a flying hill is a fairy tale.I now want to ride on top of a double decker bus.
G.K. Chesterton, The Club of Queer Trades
This book encourages you to take a look at a few things you might take for granted and consider making small, simple, and incremental changes—something that I like to call MicroShifts—that over time can lead to radical transformation in your mind, body, and soul. ...This is a little book, as befits the topic of making little changes to effect transformation. It might be the perfect book for the New Year since this is when we all have something in the back of our minds that we'd like to change, even if it is only getting up when the alarm goes off instead of hitting snooze.
This book is about practical spiritual transformation. ... As St. Ignatius taught, the spiritual life isn't something separate from everyday life: it is everything and everyone. Which means that even minor changes that you make to your exterior life can have an important impact on your deeper, inner life. And vice versa.
There is something entirely Gargantuan in the idea of economising space by piling houses on top of each other, front doors and all. And in the chaos and complexity of those perpendicular streets anything may dwell or happen, and it is in one of them, I believe, that the inquirer may find the offices of the Club of Queer Trades.I recently reread this short story collection and really loved the little ways that Chesterton stood things on their heads - as he was famous for doing. He begins at the beginning by doing that very thing as we see above.
G.K. Chesterton, The Club of Queer Trades
American Catholic History finds the hidden gems and compelling stories of Catholic Americans who have contributed to their nation by virtue of their faith over the past three centuries. In less than 10 minutes per episode, American Catholic History will introduce you to the amazing men and women who came to these American shores and were born here and contributed in ways both great and small, celebrated and unheralded.I just discovered this podcast and have really been enjoying it. The topics range from people (Frank Capra, James Longstreet, Babe Ruth) to places (Loretto Staircase, St. Mary's in Galveston) to events (Annie Moore as the first immigrant to pass through the gates of Ellis Island). At about 10 minutes per episode it is short enough to fit into any schedule.
A Christian is the one who, wherever he looks, finds Christ and rejoices in him. And this joy transforms all his human plans and programs, decisions and actions, making all his mission the sacrament of the world's return to him who is the life of the world.This book was literally pressed into my hands by my spiritual director and I read it slowly it over several months. The author was an Eastern Orthodox priest but any Christian can get a great deal of insight and inspiration from this wonderful book. He looks at the connection between daily life and the sacraments and liturgy of the church. As a result, we are repeatedly drawn into fresh realizations about how present God is in everyday life ... and how connected that is with the liturgy.
Man is a hungry being. But he is hungry for God. Behind all the hunger of our life is God. All desire is finally a desire for Him. To be sure, man is not the only hungry being. All that exists lives by "eating." The whole creation depends on food. But the unique position of man in the universe is that he alone is to bless God for the food and the life he receives from him. He alone is to respond to God's blessing with his blessing. ...This is one of the most inspirational books I've ever read. I may just begin again at the beginning.
Centuries of secularism have failed to transform eating into something strictly utilitarian. Food is still treated with reverence. A meal is still a rite—the last "natural sacrament" of family and friendship, of life that is more than "eating" and "drinking." To eat is still something more than to maintain bodily functions. People may not understand what that "something more" is, but they nonetheless desire to celebrate it. They are still hungry and thirsty for sacramental life.
It is not accidental, therefore, that the biblical story of the Fall is centered again on food. Man ate the forbidden fruit. The fruit of that one tree, whatever else it may signify, was unlike every other fruit in the Garden: it was not offered as a gift to Man. Not given, not blessed by God, it was food whose eating was condemned to be communion with itself alone, and not with God. It is the image of the world loved for itself, and eating it is the image of life understood as an end in itself.
The new and much-ballyhooed Netflix film The Two Popes should, by rights, be called The One Pope, for it presents a fairly nuanced, textured and sympathetic portrait of Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Pope Francis) and a complete caricature of Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI). This imbalance fatally undermines the movie, whose purpose, it seems, is to show that old, grumpy, legalistic Benedict finds his spiritual bearings through the ministrations of friendly, forward-looking Francis. But such a thematic trajectory ultimately does violence to both figures, and turns what could have been a supremely interesting character study into a predictable and tedious apologia for the film-maker’s preferred version of Catholicism.I haven't seen The Two Popes because all the other reviews I read gave me the clues to what Bishop Barron spells out. Barron's review looks at the missed opportunities that would have made this a more accurate film and also a film that honestly let people see both popes.
That we are dealing with a caricature of Ratzinger becomes clear when, in the opening minutes of the film, the Bavarian cardinal is presented as ambitiously plotting to secure his election as pope in 2005. On at least three occasions, the real Cardinal Ratzinger begged John Paul II to allow him to retire from his position as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and to take up a life of study and prayer.
Bishop Robert Barron's review of The Two Popes,Catholic Herald
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